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Howdy all, it’s been a good few weeks since I last updated so I figured you were all due some progress info, how time flies eh!

Progress is marching on at a nice and steady pace, we could probably do another dev video with what we have done but we’re thinking of waiting until we have the enemy AI stuff working before we do that.

Interfaces

Interfaces are now fully ported, improved and are hooked up to drive the game through events.

Portals

I’ve recreated the portal code which allows you to move between maps based on the other improvements done already and also added Spine artwork which makes portal creation more straight forward. The portals now also use Spine based hit box detection to make them more accurate to interact with. They also now use the same interact prompt as objects so when this gets more advanced you’ll be able to choose actions such as picking the lock or kicking a door down.

Combat Animations

I’ve made a bunch of new animations for Will which are going to be used in combat. Animations such as crouching, aiming and firing along with variations for when Will is unarmed and armed with a pistol, other guns will come later. I’ve learnt a lot through working with Spine and figured out quite a few areas where I can speed up the work-flow meaning I’m now working like a well oiled machine with the entire process so I should be able to build a lot more art in a smaller space of time. Here, have a sneak peak…

Combat Interface

Something else that I’ve tackled has been a brand spanking new first pass interface for the combat screen, it doesn’t have any hooks to the game code yet but it’s ready for when we start on the combat mechanic itself and uses the same event driven UI as the rest of the game meaning it’s extremely simple to have it talk to the main game screen. Here’s a sneak peak at it running in game, note though that it’s all using place holder art for now, certainly don’t take this as any inkling of what it will look like in the end…

A sneak peak at the new in game combat interface.

Enemy AI

And finally Dan has been busy working on the enemy AI, he has them patrolling about and is currently working on player detection and vision cones. They sometimes have a tendency to not stop walking however, so when the code is a bit more stable and they are behaving themselves we’ll look at getting a dev diary up to show you it in action.

It’s been a while since the last update, everything is progressing nicely but a lot of what has been done this past month hasn’t been visual enough to show to you, until now.

New Environment Concept

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a proof of concept for the way the environment is now going to look and work. You can see this below. It’s not an 100% perfect representation as there will be cars, objects, lamp posts and more road markings in the final game but it should give you a good idea of the direction we are heading.

The previous set of environment art was created using tiled blocks, this technique worked well but came with a few problems and it was these problems that caused me to re-think the strategy behind how it would work and ultimately look. The new technique we’ll be using for mapping the environment will use tiled squares for the floor elements as before but for the building elements rather than using tiled blocks we’ll now be using longer cut up strips, I’ve made an example of this below.

The new method of mapping means that the environment art can now look more detailed and can allow me to do more interesting things with buildings such as destroying them. Previously doing this with small tiled elements would have been a chore. This new method will also speed up the creation of the artwork as well as shortening the amount of time it takes to create the final in game map files. Another benefit is that there will now be less overdraw as buildings aren’t getting drawn as lots of individual tiles layered over each other; This will greatly benefit the Android and iOS versions of the game which were previously running a tad slow. The one down side is that I’ve decided to cap the height of the buildings, this doesn’t mean that we can’t increase the height later down the line however and to be honest it looks pretty good regardless.

Hopefully you all agree that this looks much better than before.

Steam Green Lit

In other news which you may have already noticed on other gaming sites or seen me mentioning on Steam, Twitter or Facebook is that we have now been successfully green lit by the lovely folks on Steam. This is absolutely fantastic news and means we are eligible for things such as Steam Early Access which we are very much contemplating doing.

A massive massive thank you to all of you for supporting, following and of course voting. We couldn’t have done this without you all and I am incredibly honoured and grateful for your continued support! Thanks!

For those of you who like stats here a few for you.
Days it took to get the green light : 92
Total current unique visitors : 50,104
Total yes votes : 14,307
Total current followers : 980
Total current favourites : 1,012

Video Diary #2

All being well in the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing another video diary regarding some of the new features, watch this space.

The Kickstarter campaign is now approaching the half way point, it’s crazy to think it’s been going for a couple of weeks already. Time has flown! Don’t forget to check out the reward tiers and think about pledging, it will all go towards making this a great experience.

Ammo

Ammo is a bit different in Will to Survive, you’ll be able to find different types of each round and will even be able to craft your own once you have learnt how. You could be adding phosphorus to some shotgun shells to create incendiary ammo or applying unknown alien liquids to the tips of bullets to test the effects. Everything that you can collect in the game will have a purpose, that purpose could just be to harvest chemicals or other supplies… ever wondered how much gunpowder is in a firework?

Survivors

Not many survivors live in the world now and the ones who are left tend to lead solitary lives hiding away as best as possible. They don’t want to get caught by the aliens who threaten their very existence.

Female Survivor

Male Survivor

When you do come across a new survivor you may need to gain their trust before they help you out. Once you are acquainted you may find that they have items to trade, tips or info to share and may even have quests for you complete. It’s important to try and look after your fellow humans, failing to aid them when they are in urgent need of help could mean they no longer exist. If the aliens have less humans to search for they stand a higher chance of finding you!

In today’s update I wanted to talk a little about the role weapon customisation will have in the game.

Here in the UK we don’t have access to a lot of weaponry. We don’t have AK47’s and M1911’s lying around the place so the ones you do find will be quite precious. Adapting them and improving them will be quite important. Adding scopes for example will increase your accuracy at various distances as well as the speed you can acquire a target. You’ll be able to attach flash lights and laser targeting either by standard means or just by using some tape you once scavenged. Some of the attachments will be able to be transferred too as long as it wasn’t a permanent fixture.

Will’s Gun Notes

Possibly the most important feature will be the ability to adapt some of the alien tech. You may find the ability to do this yourself or failing that find a helpful survivor willing to trade you something in return for his expertise in the matter. As enemies get bigger, you’ll need something more powerful than that .22 rifle of yours!

At the end of the day Will needs as much help as possible, as time goes on the threat grows stronger and ammunition will be harder to find. Gather what you can and adapt to the ever changing world around you.

Kickstarter

The kickstarter still has 25 days to go, if you can pledge that would be great but sharing is also important. let’s get the word out there! Also if we can get this green lit then anybody receiving the game as part of a reward tier will automatically receive a free steam key.

The Kickstarter is going well so far. We’ve now reached the £1K mark! There’s still a way to go but the response has been great so far. Thanks to all those who have pledged and shared the project.

The Gargantuan

I’ve managed to sneak in a bit of alien concept art time in amongst the busy schedule of running a Kickstarter. This is one that I’ve been wanting to design for a while now. It’s a rather big brute who has a rather devastating secondary attack capable of destroying both sets of cover during a fight. Scary!

Will’s Gargantuan Notes

As the threat level of the world increases, the scale, amount and sheer power of the aliens will increase with it. As that happens Will needs bigger weapons or a way to reduce the threat… maybe he needs to sabotage their way of calling backup?

In The Press

The project has had some more press recently which is fantastic. I’ve been mailing as many sites as possible trying to get coverage. Here are the articles that went up recently.

Quick update time. Everything is going well so far, I’m getting a lot done in preparation for the Kickstarter. Mainly in terms of artwork, which I am about to show, but also lots of other little behind the scenes details.

First up is the main Kickstarter project image. This is slightly higher detail than the one used for the actual Kickstarter artwork because I felt it was worth showing off. I tried to give as much of a representation of the games subject matter and theme from just one image. Did it work?

Art for the Kickstarter main project image.

The second is a spot of concept art which I’m going to use in the video to try and show that there will be various types of aliens to battle, they will come in all different shapes and sizes to keep you on your toes.

Concept art for some of the invader types.

Tomorrow I’ll be attempting to build the iOS, OUYA and Mac OSX builds which is also rather exciting.

I’m a day late on this but as promised here are some images displaying the new tiling world art and objects as well as a glimpse of the player and alien sprites used in the world. These are actual screen grabs taken from the prototype running in 720p on the PC.

It’s all starting to come together which is great and I’m hard at work knocking off the tasks on my check list and glueing all the cracks together to form one cohesive whole, I’ve also registered for development on the Playstation Vita/Mobile. It’s getting rather exciting!… Anyway, have some pretties!

A screen grab of the prototype world as it currently looks.

An in game grab of how the inventory looks with some new item art and overlaid onto the world.

The past two and a bit weeks have been a busy few hence the lack of updates. I’ve been busy creating all the world artwork for the prototype as well as creating sprites to be used for the world versions of the player character and alien enemy. I’ll hopefully look at uploading some previews of the new sprites and world artwork tomorrow but for now here’s what I’ve been working on today.

Alien art used in cinematic cut scene events.

Most of the artwork for the prototype is now done meaning I can concentrate on finishing the programming side of things, all being well the aim is do have the prototype finished by the end of the month ready for a proper reveal in July… exciting times!

As promised last time here is some item artwork that I’ve been working on. The larger ones being used for the item details screen and the smaller ones being used in the inventory list screen.

Items that you will be able to find and use.

So far I’ve been keeping the exact details of the game a little hush hush until I’ve got a full working prototype but I’m sure looking at the items available you can glean a little bit of info about what the game is.

This past few weeks I’ve spent finalising the design of the primary foe in the game and incurring Wacom claw by drawing a pain staking 34 different frames of animation for the beast to be used in the fight screens. Here’s a few for you to check out…

Alien artwork used in fight screens.

I’m currently working on a load of inventory artwork which I will no doubt post up soon after they are done, but at some point in the next few weeks I’ll also try and upload a more detailed concept of the Alien for you to take a gander at.